Fiedler Contingency Model
FIEDLER CONTINGENCY MODEL
The Fiedler contingency model is a leadership theory of industrial and organizational psychology developed by Fred Fiedler (born 1922), one of the leading scientists who helped his field move from the research of traits and personal characteristics of leaders to leadership styles and behaviours.
Two factors
The first management style, Taylorists, assumed there was one best style of leadership. Fiedler’s contingency model postulates that the leader’s effectiveness is based on ‘situational contingency’ which is a result of interaction of two factors: leadership style and situational favorableness (later called situational control). More than 400 studies have since investigated this relationship
Least preferred co-worker (LPC)
The leadership style of the leader, thus, fixed and measured by what he calls the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale, an instrument for measuring an individual’s leadership orientation. The LPC scale asks a leader to think of all the people with whom they have ever worked and then describe the person with whom they have worked least well, using a series of bipolar scales of 1 to 8, such as the following:
|Unfriendly |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Friendly |
|Uncooperative |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Cooperative |
|Hostile |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Supportive |
|.... |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |.... |
|Guarded |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Open |
The responses to these scales (usually 18-25 in total) are summed and averaged: a high LPC score suggests that the leader has a human relations orientation, while a low LPC score indicates a task orientation. Fiedler assumes that everybody's least preferred coworker in fact is on average about equally unpleasant. But people who are indeed relationship motivated, tend to describe their least preferred coworkers in a more positive manner, e.g., more pleasant and more efficient.
The Fiedler contingency model is a leadership theory of industrial and organizational psychology developed by Fred Fiedler (born 1922), one of the leading scientists who helped his field move from the research of traits and personal characteristics of leaders to leadership styles and behaviours.
Two factors
The first management style, Taylorists, assumed there was one best style of leadership. Fiedler’s contingency model postulates that the leader’s effectiveness is based on ‘situational contingency’ which is a result of interaction of two factors: leadership style and situational favorableness (later called situational control). More than 400 studies have since investigated this relationship
Least preferred co-worker (LPC)
The leadership style of the leader, thus, fixed and measured by what he calls the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale, an instrument for measuring an individual’s leadership orientation. The LPC scale asks a leader to think of all the people with whom they have ever worked and then describe the person with whom they have worked least well, using a series of bipolar scales of 1 to 8, such as the following:
|Unfriendly |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Friendly |
|Uncooperative |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Cooperative |
|Hostile |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Supportive |
|.... |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |.... |
|Guarded |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |Open |
The responses to these scales (usually 18-25 in total) are summed and averaged: a high LPC score suggests that the leader has a human relations orientation, while a low LPC score indicates a task orientation. Fiedler assumes that everybody's least preferred coworker in fact is on average about equally unpleasant. But people who are indeed relationship motivated, tend to describe their least preferred coworkers in a more positive manner, e.g., more pleasant and more efficient.